How do I get the girl to stop whining?

[JusticeZero]

One of my female students protests incessantly. 'noo, noo, noo, I can't, noo, noo this is not working, noo..' Won't freaking commit to kicks (I don't want to hurt you!), won't do new material without excessive amounts of prodding. I don't have a formal structure here to work with, and the class size is tiny (2 students) but it's really getting on my nerves and I haven't been able to get a change in behavior to stick. They're actually a good student once they are made to do the exercizes, i'm just tired of having to tell them to do ieach one three or four times before I can get any cooperation, and then have to listen to a litany of how bad of a student they are as a constant drone accompanying each repetition.

Any suggestions?

[Mr. Mike]

just guessing here, but I would say she is in her teens.

You have to let her know how good of a job she IS doing. You will have to bolster her self confidence. Sounds like she is dealing with low self esteem.

Just tell her this "You can always do better than you think you can!"

And then help her to believe it.

We also have a student promise that we make the students pledge to...mostly in tyhe 7-14yr class, and it goes like this: "I promise to do what I have to do, when I have to do it, whether I like it or not."

that helps too.

good luck.

[JusticeZero]

I don't know her age, but she's married and doesn't look teen-aged. I wish I could get another person into my class so that she wouldn't have to compare herself to me or someone who's been training for months.

[pineapple]

My experience with the type of students that you described have always quit. I try to encourage them by telling them to stop worrying about anything and just do what they're told to do but if they refused, I move on and spend my time with the students who put forth effort.

I would suggest trying to find more students who are more willing to do what's needed. I have trained many females who were more than willing to hit me hard and did whatever I told them to do without hesitation.

I have trained the physically handicapped and the mentally handicapped with no problems but a person that needs to be "babied" will not make it in the martial arts world. (not without a complete overhaul of their attitude anyway)

[Mr. Mike]

to be quite honest, some of the best motivated are the handicapped...they have something to prove.

It sounds to me like thsi girl simply doens;t want to be there.

she needs an attitude adjustment...just like BA Barrackus always talked about

[CheekyMusician]

How long has she been training for?

Keep in mind she may just be awkward and embarrassed and her 'noo, nooo-ing' may just be her defence mechanism. I know when I first started karate I was a bit like that, albeit I was a teenager at the time, but I did tend to end up giving up on difficult techniques easily, giggling and doing crappy techniques because I didn't want to hurt people. It wasn't a case of being under-motivated or not taking things seriously...I used to go home and train like crazy and read tonnes of karate books. It was simply a case of being embarrassed and feeling stupid, and eventually after a lot of patience on both my part and my teachers' parts, I settled in and now get on with it quite happilly.

Even now, though, I tend to find myself giving up on some of the harder kata because I feel like I'm looking like a dunce and getting under other peoples' feet. Its natural that she might feel stupid if she hasn't been training long and is training with higher graded people. Maybe ask her if she has a friend she'd like to bring along as that might make her feel more at ease, or if you know someone who'd be interested in training (it would be especially good if it were another woman), then invite them along.

[cathal]

I don't know her age, but she's married and doesn't look teen-aged. I wish I could get another person into my class so that she wouldn't have to compare herself to me or someone who's been training for months.

Sounds like you've given up on her already. If you aren't willing or motivated it is going to hurt her performance. First you have to get yourself into gear; you're teaching for a reason after all. You're experienced enough and perform clean techniques if you're instructing, so don't give up on your students or you've failed. IMHO I would chat with her about her motivations and attitude, and help her to understand that her attitudes can hurt others and hinder her own training.

[JusticeZero]

I haven't given up, but she can't see the 'before' and 'after' on herself to see that she's doing a technique pretty well at the end of class rather thannot knowing it at all, but she CAN see that she's getting her feet mixed up trying to learn it while the other person in the class is working on fine-tuning balance, distance and accuracy as opposed to simply performing the technique at all. So I get complaints about being a 'bad student' and such.

I did talk to her about it.

I was responded to that the complaints were cultural (Right, but I need you to do the things I ask without having to be convinced to, or it takes time from class and screws up my ability to keep order.) and sometimes she didn't want to do a thing (see above, and that I can't run a class if the precedent is set that the exercizes are to be taken as "suggestions".)

[jarrettmeyer]

You've got to find her motivation for not wanting to move on.

Is she not comfortable with her current technique?

Does she need to slow down, maybe go back to the beginning?

Did she have a rough day at work and doesn't really want to work out?

Is she bored, and this really isn't the thing for her?

Is there a self-esteem issue that needs to be dealt with first?

Is it a matter of coordination? Are her feet messing up because she's never really done anything like this before? Do you need to try doing some sports drills that many kids do to improve general athleticism? (Run through tires, go play Dance Dance Revolution, etc.)

The list goes on and on...

Until you can find out her motivation, the problem will not go away. I would bet that there is something else bothering her. You, as a teacher, need to find that deeper problem to fix this surface issue.

[JusticeZero]

As a rule, the tendency is that she's not comfortable with her skill level on the technique, wants to slow down, and is working on coordination, but the flipside is that there's a certain amount of material I -need- to get through early in the class so that we can have a foundation to go back and work on the other material again in a more coherent way. We -need- to cover the four most common basic escapes (which are all building blocks for all other movements); the six most common kicks and cabecada (all of which are a movement fundamental); ginga, negaca, negativa, and role (stance); au and queda de rins (falling). That's eighteen things there, of varying complexity. This is the core. Everything relates to those things.

I'm trying to cover 2-3 movements each 90 minute class, plus one song and basic drills, putting the movements learned over the day into one paired drill.

For instance, one kick, one escape, then by the end of the class be paired off using the escape to evade the new kick. And we'll stall while trying to do the new kick, i'll pick up frustration at having to move on and pick up the escape because they aren't satisfied with the kick, they want to just do more reps of the kick and analyze it to death, but parts of the kick aren't going to completely make sense until I can show it in the context of the paired exercize, and I need to teach the escape that we'll be using to evade the kick.

It -feels- like perfectionism to me. I'm trying to keep the pace down, but on the other hand, I need to finish out those fundamentals so we can start doing more compound combining of the fundamentals because the senior student has a hard time grasping a movement unless it is in a context of other movements, and the longer i'm stuck on single movements, the more frustrated I feel at not being able to accomodate his needs too, as i've been focusing a lot on getting her through everything, and he's paying to show up too. I don't mind the slowdown once we're doing composite exercises, because it will be more interactive than just throwing many reps of one kick with no context.